Overview of Debugging in Visual Studio Code

Debugging in Visual Studio Code requires that you create a launch configuration with the settings which the debugger requires to enable it to debug your COBOL or PL/I code. The following instructions demonstrate how to debug native COBOL or PL/I code with the default launch configuration:

1. Open the folder that contains your sources in Visual Studio Code.
2. Ensure that the sources are compiled.
3. Click (Run > Start Debugging).

   This shows the Task Picker with the available debugging tasks:

   
   
   
4. Select the task required for your code - either COBOL (native): (native) or PL/I: (native) from the drop-down list. This is the default task provided with the Rocket Enterprise extension for debugging native COBOLor PL/I applications, respectively.

   This creates a launch.json file in a .vscode subfolder in the folder that holds your sources. By default, the launch.json contains two configurations - one for debugging a standalone application, and one for attaching the debugger to a running process. For COBOL these are:

       "configurations": [
           {
               "type": "cobol",
               "request": "launch",
               "name": "COBOL (native): Launch",
               "program": "${workspaceFolder}/<insert-program-name-here>",
               "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
               "stopOnEntry": true
           },
           {
               "type": "cobol",
               "request": "attach",
               "name": "COBOL (native): Attach to process",
               "processId": "${command:pickProcess}"
           }
       ]
   }

   For PL/I, the configurations are:

       "configurations": [
           {
               "type": "pli",
               "request": "launch",
               "name": "PL/I: Launch",
               "program": "${workspaceFolder}/<insert-program-name-here>",
               "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
               "stopOnEntry": true
           },
           {
               "type": "pli",
               "request": "attach",
               "name": "PL/I: Attach to process",
               "processId": "${command:pickProcess}"
           }
       ]

   You can add more configurations to this file as required.

5. In the Activity bar, click to open the Run panel.

   The two default launch configurations are listed in the Configuration drop-down within the Run panel as follow - for COBOL:

   
   
   

   Or, for PL/I code:

   
   
   
6. Select the launch configuration, COBOL (native): Launch or PL/I: Launch, and click (Start Debugging).
   
   
7. Use the commands in the Debug widget to step through the code.
   
   
8. Use the available views to watch how variables change.
9. As you step through the code, the values of variables on the current line are shown inline in the editor, at the end of the line:
   
   

   You can control whether to display the inline values with the Microsoft Debug: Inline Values setting of Visual Studio Code.

10. In the VARIABLES panel, click the View Binary Data icon on a row for a variable.

    This opens a Memory window that enables you to view and edit data in the memory associated with the selected item.